Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present

What Nerve! reveals a hidden history of American figurative painting, sculpture and popular imagery. It documents and/or restages four installations, spaces or happenings, in Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit and Providence, which were crucial to the development of figurative art in the United States. Several of the better-known artists in What Nerve! have been the subject of significant exhibitions or publications, but this is the first major volume to focus on the broader impact of figurative art to connect artists and collectives from different generations and regions of the country. These are: from Chicago, the Hairy Who (James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, Karl Wirsum); from California, Funk artists (Jeremy Anderson, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Robert Hudson, Ken Price, Peter Saul, Peter Voulkos, William T. Wiley); from Detroit, Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw); and from Providence, Forcefield (Mat Brinkman, Jim Drain, Leif Goldberg, Ara Peterson). Created in collaboration with artists from these groups, the historical moments at the core of What Nerve! are linked by work from six artists who profoundly influenced or were influenced by the groups: William Copley, Jack Kirby, Elizabeth Murray, Gary Panter, Christina Ramberg and H.C. Westermann. Featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and videos, as well as ephemera, wallpaper and other materials used in the reconstructed installations, the book and exhibition will broaden public exposure to the scope of this influential history. The exuberance, humor and politics of these artworks remain powerfully resonant. Much of the work in this book, including installation photos, exhibition ephemera and correspondence, is published for the first time. What Nerve! represents the first historical examination of the circumstances, relationships and works of an increasingly important lineage of American artists.

One third of the artist collective Paper Rad and the Creative Director of Fox's forthcoming late night animation block ADHD, Ben Jones (born 1977) makes work that harks back to the Saturday morning cartoons and video games of the 1980s. Jones' previous book, New Painting and Drawing, quickly sold out, making Men's Group: The Video the only currently available collection of his work. The book's theme is maleness; it includes the last five years of the artist's paintings, comics, drawings, products and videos, and is published on the occasion of the artist's solo exhibition, The Video, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, November 3, 2012-February 24, 2013. Also included is a series of texts about manhood commissioned from men the artist admires, including artists Peter Saul, Gary Panter and Joe Bradley, writers Keith McCulloch and Byron Coley and gallerist Phil Grauer, with a rebuttal by Nicole Rudick. Topping it all off are two lengthy interviews with Jones conducted by Dan Nadel and David Kramer. All of this work is showcased in an innovative format--multiple paper sizes and stocks bound together with a spiral wire and wrapped between thick chipboard covers.Ben Jones has exhibited or performed at museums and galleries including Deitch Projects, New York (solo), Foxy Production, New York, Loyal Galleri, Malmo (solo), The Modern, Fort Worth (solo), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Britain, London. He is a founding member of Paper Rad. Ben Jones lives in Los Angeles and is the Creative Director of Fox's forthcoming late night animation block, ADHD.

Published by PictureBox.Edited by Dan Nadel.

One of America’s finest abstract painters, Chris Martin (born 1954) explores the fertile areas between sophisticated formalism and the visionary joy of outsider art, making abstract painting look enviably effortless. For this massive volume, Martin and Dan Nadel have assembled a massive compendium of Martin’s drawings from the past 30 years, presenting them chronologically so the reader–viewer can follow the artist’s continual pursuit and discovery of new forms--from sound waves to mushrooms to Tantric arches to the iconic visages of James Brown and Sigmar Polke. For Martin, drawing is an end in itself that also often leads to themes he later reprises and explores in his painting. Taking its design inspiration from the artist’s books of Dieter Roth, Drawings acts as a flipbook of discovery, one that charts Martin’s artistic development over the past three decades.

American artist Karl Wirsum (born 1939) was a member of the legendary Chicago artist community The Hairy Who (whose other members included Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt and Suellen Rocca). Best known as a painter, he has also worked in printmaking, sculpture, digital art and marionettes. Pristine, cartoonish, flatly graphic and brightly chromatic, his paintings portray solitary, hallucinatory, often somewhat demonic characters, depicted against spare backdrops. This catalogue commemorates Wirsum’s fall 2013 exhibition at Derek Eller gallery in New York. It presents 25 new paintings and drawings accompanied by questions to the artist (and his answers) from an all-star roster of curators and artists, including Gary Panter, Carter E. Foster, Chris Ware, KAWS, Erik Parker, Jeff Koons, Mark Pascale, Robert Storr, Robert Cozzolino and Peter Saul.

Published by Damiani.Foreword by Paul McCartney.Text by Norman Hathaway, Dan Nadel.

From advertising and fashion to music and film, the psychedelic aesthetic defined the look of the 1960s. And yet neither the true scope of psychedelic art nor its key practitioners have ever been the subject of a thorough overview. Electrical Banana is the first definitive examination of the international language of psychedelia, focusing on the most important practitioners in their respective fields. Compiling hundreds of unseen images plus exclusive interviews and essays, it revises and expands the common perception of psychedelic art, revealing it to be more innovative, compelling and revolutionary than is usually acknowledged. Electrical Banana documents the great virtuosos of psychedelic art: men and women whose work combines avant-garde design with highly sophisticated image-making. Launching a million Day-glo dreams, the artists include: Marijke Koger, the Dutch artist responsible for dressing the Beatles; Mati Klarwein, who painted the cover for Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew; Keiichi Tanaami, the Japanese master of psychedelic posters; Heinz Edelmann, the German illustrator and designer of the Beatles’ animated film Yellow Submarine; Tadanori Yokoo, whose prints, books and fabrics defined the 1960s in Japan; Dudley Edwards, a painter, car decorator and graphic artist on the London rock scene; and the enigmatic Australian Martin Sharp, whose work for Cream and underground magazines made him a hippie household name in Europe. Electrical Banana features a lengthy historical essay and interviews with all of the artists.

Published by PictureBox.Edited by Mike Kelley, Dan Nadel. Text by Nicole Rudick.

The influential Detroit “anti-rock” group Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw) made raucous music, irreverent art and legendary zines, performing and disseminating their activities through an elaborate self-mythology. The Destroy All Monsters zines have been reprinted in facsimile editions, but the art objects made by the members have never been examined as independent works. Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters 1974–1977 is the first retrospective of the artwork itself, as well as a DAM overview. Produced in collaboration with the artists, it collects the work of the collective between circa 1974–1977, almost all of which is previously unpublished. Included are dozens of candid photographs of the group and their environs by DAM member Carey Loren, which serve as both documents of a proto-punk group at its height and snapshots of the collective’s often hilarious attempts to construct identities as characters in the larger Destroy All Monsters mythology; early prints and drawings by Jim Shaw that show the seeds of his later work, and remain powerful images; a voluminous quantity of drawings and etching by Mike Kelley, often of monsters and political personalities, that indicate the artist’s anarchic roots; and hitherto unseen drawings and prints by Niagara that show the heady imagination and sure-footed line that would continue to serve her well. Return of the Repressed leaves off just as DAM shifted into the now legendary rock band with Niagara at the helm.

An intimate look at the work and life of a legendary artist. Gary Panter has been one of the most influential figures in visual culture since the mid-1970s. From his era-defining punk graphics to his cartoon icon Jimbo to his visionary design for Pee-wee's Playhouse, he has left his mark on every medium he's touched. Working in close collaboration with the artist, PictureBox has assembled the definitive volume on Panter's work from the early 1970s to the present. This monumental, slipcased set is split into two 350-page volumes. The first is a comprehensive monograph featuring over 700 images of paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters and comics, alongside essays by Robert Storr, Mike Kelley, Richard Klein, Richard Gehr, Karrie Jacobs and Byron Coley, as well a substantial commentary by the artist himself. The second volume features a selection from Panter's sketchbooks--the site of some of his most audacious work--most of which has never been published in any form.A three-time Emmy Award-winner for his production design on Pee-wee's Playhouse and the recipient of the 2000 Chrysler Award for Design Excellence, graphic artist Gary Panter has drawn inspiration from diverse vernacular and traditional art arenas over the course of the past four decades. Closely associated with the underground comics and music scenes on both coasts, he is responsible for designing the Screamers iconic 1970s poster, many record covers for Frank Zappa, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Residents and the ongoing comic character Jimbo. Most recently Panter has performed psychedelic light shows at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and at New York's Anthology Film Archives. He was a featured artist in the major 2006-2007 touring exhibition, Masters of American Comics.

Published by PictureBox.Text by Geoffrey Young, Joao Ribas.

This two-volume set features the psychedelic, expressionistic figuration of Eddie Martinez in one volume and the Thomas Nozkowski-esque abstractions of Chuck Webster in the other. Both Brooklyn-based artists, represented in New York by Zieher-Smith, are enamored with paint--both, in fact, embrace painting's historical baggage, its romantic and spiritual undertones. Martinez combines fearlessly expressive paint handling with a feel for cartoon imagery and personal symbology. Webster, on the other hand, makes Minimal talismanic works that are formally rigorous and impeccably polished. Together they present a friendly argument for the myriad possibilities of contemporary painting. An interview with the artists, who are old friends, and a selection of their collaborative drawings form a bridge between the books. First monographs for both artists, these volumes also include essays by Joao Ribas and Geoffrey Young.

Published by PictureBox.

This is a book about Wilco and the pictorial, literary and musical world it conjures up on record and in performance. Created in collaboration with Jeff Tweedy, Wilco and Tony Margherita, this primarily visual book explores what Wilco does, how it does it, and where it all comes together. The band narrates the book in the form of long captions accompanying a variety of images: a Korean postcard, a Stratocaster, a backstage practice session, and so on. Along the way, central topics such as instruments, touring and recording are covered both in general (i.e., what happens, physically, when a guitar string breaks) and specific to Wilco. Just as the band assembles its disparate talents and inspirations to make music, this book coheres in the end to reveal a 40-minute CD of original, unreleased songs. Just as Wilco experiments with music by turning convention on its head, this book is an utterly new take on the old genre of the rock 'n' roll book. The Wilco Book will look and read like a Wilco record sounds; it's a translation of the band's sensibility from sound into print.

Tucked inside issue number 3 of The Ganzfeld, for your reading and looking pleasure, are humorous picture stories on color theory, milk, where we go when we die, and the lost genre of blank books. And that's just the usual. Bringing together a unique group of designers, illustrators, cartoonists, and artists, The Ganzfeld provides the crispest picture of the state of graphic arts to be found anywhere. Issue number 3 features a unique collaboration between The Ice Storm author Rick Moody and artist Fred Tomaselli, a new picture story by designer Geoff McFetridge, and even an illustrated essay by Alfred Hitchcock. Lengthy comics and picture stories are contributed by an international group including Ren»e French, Ron Reg» Jr., and Adam Dent. This installation of the anthology also puts the spotlight on history: Lawrence Weschler writes about Brueghe, two prominent design writers, Andrea Codrington and Julie Lasky, each contribute articles on lost design arts of the past, while the Hairy Who (Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum, etc.) are given a 30 page retrospective. An invaluable resource and pleasure source for anyone interested in the graphic arts and all their various manifestations.

Comics aren't just for kids, and illustrations don't merely transpose text into image. Picture stories can do more than just tell a simple, illiterate narrative, and design, well, design infiltrates the visual aspects of nearly everything that surrounds us. If these statements seems like truisms, they are, but they were hardly obvious conclusions just a few years ago, before the arts once considered merely commercial exploded into the mainstream. Unlike any other publication, the Ganzfeld gathers together a diverse sampling of recent design, illustration, and comics, together with essays that place them in a historical and critical context. Better still, this volume includes the first publication of comics genius Chris Ware's color sketchbooks; endpapers designed by nest editor Joseph Holtzman, covers by the Beastie Boys and GAP designer Mike Mills; an illustrated story by Maira Kalman; wallpaper designs by a cartoonist, a fine artist, an illustrator, and a designer; visual reportage on the Venice Biennale by Paul Davis; and far too much more to mention here.